Blender 2.46 released – Sequencer updated!

Blender 2.46 has been released yesterday (download from here) and one of the many changes worth mentioning are the updates to the Sequencer (video editing). This is such an elegant, minimal and yet powerful NLE…! To my knowledge there is no other video editing software, be it open-source like blender or a commercial solution, that runs on that many platforms (blender works under Linux, OS X, Windows, Solaris and OpenBSD and .blend files are 100% compatible across all of these platforms!).

There sure are some limitations, but after a first couple of tests and playing around with the 2.46 release candidate in the last couple of days I can only repeat that I am very impressed by the blender NLE. It has so much potential… Just don’t make the mistake of underestimating its capabilities when only quickly looking at the “Sequence” preset that blender offers by default. Read about it in the blender Wiki. There is room for improvement when it comes to certain workflows, but in a way this is also another strength of the blender NLE: it provides you with all the basics you need for non-linear video editing and lets you configure the tool in ways that are just not possible with traditional NLEs – since blender is of course a 3D application you can load 3D scenes directly (!) into the NLE or find a workflow where you combine the NLE with the Compositing Nodes.

I think with this update the blender VSE is now more than ready for wider, commercial use for (short) lengths video post production: it is free, open-source and runs on virtually any platform a production company might be using – no licensing fees have to be paid to anyone and if you need to make changes to the application, like adding a feature, you can always do it – it’s open-source! One reason why blender is growing so quickly is because individuals as well as companies constantly improve its (3D) capabilities and give code back to the project: so basically a small investment that one company makes can be shared with all others and instead of just getting one new feature you might get as many as in this latest 2.46 release – giving away something in the open-source world means getting more in return in the long run – everyone wins (except for a few big companies that have monopoly like power in the NLE world).

BTW, if anyone reading this is wondering about vivaldirock: I was waiting for the new blender and I am rendering (again) now… There is still one technical issue that I have to solve, I was hoping there would be a fix for it in the new blender version but it looks like I have to try a workaround for now. More about that once the video is online… (If you don’t know: instead of checking back if the video is online already you can also simply subscribe to my video RSS feed: just (right) click/Copy Link Location and paste it in e.g. iTunes under Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast…: the video will then be downloaded automatically for you once I’ve posted it!)